It Was a Season of Falling Leaves
by remthedogsitter
Summary: KakairuFest Collection of drabbles for the Kakairufest Autumn 2012
1. Genin Round: We Are Ninja

**We Are Ninja, Not a Dating Service (Our Closest Idea of Romance is Not Getting Killed/Ambushed on a Date)**

A/N: so here it is my first entry to my first kakairu fest as a writer/player/whatever

Round: Genin

No one knows if it was a mistake or sabotage but at the end of a particularly busy week two ninja of varying degrees of anger came. The grievance, two switched mission scrolls:

Mission: weed-pulling, location: the forest of death (shamelessly meant for Kakashi)

Mission: investigation, target: Hatake Kakashi's mask (shamelessly meant for Iruka's nonexistent love life)

It was a week of Kakashi staring at his wardrobe and Iruka avoiding skunks the sizes of bears. But when they meet in the Mission Room in the line intended to entertain complaints, instead anger becomes laughter as the two discover who funded these particular missions: Team 7. The brats were going to pay.


	2. Chunnin Round: Two Sad Things and a

Chunnin Round

**Two Sad Things and a Bottle of Ink**

A/N: I uped my game for this round :D

Word count: 98

Fear is the watercolor that dribbles down your skin (the most beautiful shade of sand), it is a bright, bright red. The same shade of red that spins wildly to trace the elongated metal, the Moses staff that pierced rock to bring water to the dessert. But this water is red. And the dessert is alive. The Moses is no savior but a madman.

(Fear is a shivering breath) Kakashi gasps.

The dessert in his arms (shivers), blooms the fleeting red of a dessert flower at the base of polished silver (like moonlight, like your hair). And stills.

II.

Word count: 136

There are two old houses at the end of the street. Its wood is worn and painted obscenities, in a jungle of concrete it leans against the other for comfort. There is a sadness in that small space in time, the story of two lovers. Two boys barely men. Of once upon a time. A time when love was difficult.

They would at night curl up against their wall that leaned into the other house and tap messages to each other, ears pressed to hear with the hope of hearing the other breathe. It was to drown out the drunkard father, silence the prostitute mother who locked them in this cage. One night does not bring the sound of breath but the silence of blood and nick of blade. The other dies of grief on string.

III.

Word count: 176

The white haired samurai stilled at the ink painting on the wall, it was a kingfisher on a perch but it had been so gently done that it seemed to be in the rest before taking flight. He decided then and there, the artist would be the man to paint his skin the image that would reflect his very soul like his blade. An image only this artist would know.

He buys the painting. He searches for years and grey becomes grey. His life is weary and his sword becomes heavy.

He finds the painter, just as old as he. Eyes growing dim.

"Will you paint me artist?"

"A fisher told me. I've been waiting for a long time."

The artist traces his faces with his hands with a familiarity, as natural as breathing though he hardly sees. The samurai sighs beneath the soft hands. His yutaka is removed and his is sprawled on his stomach. Hands trace the canvas, the only canvas for his soul. The artists takes his sword heated by coals and begins.


	3. Jounin Round: Wolf, the Scarecrow and th

Jounin Round

_When the enemy attacks, remain undisturbed but feign weakness. _

_Book of Five Rings, Fire Book. The Second: Tai no Sen_

Word count: 86

Kakashi had many enemies but so little that could strike him fatally.

It is a rule, of course, a well learned lesson to put the enemy into a false sense of security but remain ever armed and poised, he had lived and survived this way for years… but now in the face of this uncertainty, in the form of a man, he feigns undisturbed but his insides shake in weakness at the words thrown like kunais and aimed at his nondescript heart _I love you Kakashi. _

_It is not enemy or foe, but a man's own mind that lures him to evil ways  
__Buddha_

Word count: 194

What Kakashi knows is that his mind is not his own. His will is a misplaced direction from the girl and sensei who told him to live (for your self which is an overall confusing concept), a face that haunts him like a ghost (a ghost he once loved) and mistakenly an eye (his guilt) who tells him that it wants to see the future. It becomes a surreal scarecrow then, this man who looks like a ghost, with an eye looking forward and a will scattered around like mist and who cannot for the life of him recognize the voice calling out to him from the present with weird promises of love.

It is a sick pleasure thinking only the ghost can love, the will can move and the eye as the only thing that can see because in the end it is only his mind telling him that he cannot be happy.

But he accepts to live with this tan stranger, only because there is something inside his chest that stirs, something he feels that does not belong to him but at the same time the only thing that can be his.

_Life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated  
__Confucius_

Word count: 76

"I…"_ hesitation_

"Words are simple, Kakashi."

"I… " _fear_

"Just four letters…" _that those letters are not enough_

"Must I?" _to capture the moment of being born again_

"You make things complicated when it's the simplest thing in the world. The first thing we learn after breathing—" _but I'm drowning so utterly_

"I love you Iruka." It comes out like a breath but it's such as a sharp intake of breath. The argument is silenced.

_It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both  
Machiavelli_

Word count: 153

"Fool, are you not afraid of the Big. Bad. Wolf?" Scorn. Large chest looms with every breath. A white porcelain mask dotted with red shines in moonlight, yet the other so small stands there against the wood with a knife held high. His white furred ears twitch, hearing the rapid heartbeat of his prey.

The young man looks him in the eye (or at least the shadow of where he is sure he should see mismatched colors) with a foggy familiarity. _I know you I know you. _

"Run, run, run, back to your school little one." He growls. "The wolf wants to hunt." Feigns to attack.

The young boy runs, defiant still and looks at him with tear stained eyes. _I know you. _

The wolf watches till he disappears, tail swishes before he collapses on the ground, clawing his chest. He was the wolf that loved a boy he saved too long ago.

_Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt__  
__Sun Tzu_

Word count: 118

There is a figure that stalks the rooftops, in the pure dark of a cloudy night. Rain. It means rain. Soon he is pelted by a monsoon. He had traced this path so many nights his feet take him to the windowsill he has slipped letters and words and promises between the wooden frames.

Like every night there is no reply. But this night the figure in the bed is not prone in sleep but sitting against the headboard, waiting.

There is no letter tonight. The window is not locked but opened ever so slightly. Tonight the sky becomes illuminated for the briefest moment, showing a shadow sitting on the windowsill, falling into the depths of waiting arms.


End file.
